Charlottesville remains on edge
Gov. McAuliffe blasts hate groups as city officials ID woman killed in car attack
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Charlottesville was on edge Sunday as police and residents tried to piece together how a white nationalist rally turned deadly when a man rammed his car into counterprotesters in an act described by a member of the Trump administration as terrorism.
Makeshift memorials dotted downtown streets where bloody brawls took place the day before. And police in riot gear stood at the ready in case of more clashes as anti-racist activists gathered near City Hall, holding signs that read “No Trump, no KKK, no racist USA.”
Rallies were taking place around the country, from Los Angeles to Miami, in support of the dozens injured in Charlottesville and the three who died, including two state police officers whose helicopter crashed Saturday.
“To the white supremacists and the neo-Nazis who came to our state yesterday, there is no place for you here,” Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said, drawing an implicit contrast with President Donald Trump’s refusal to single out the same groups for blame.
“Shame on you,” said the governor, who spoke at the Mount Zion First African Baptist Church, blocks from the site of the clashes.
On Sunday afternoon, angry protesters chased down one of the rally’s main organizers as he attempted to address reporters outside Charlottesville City Hall.
Members of the crowd shouted “Murderer!” and “Shame!” at Jason Kessler, a blogger based in Charlottesville, as a police sniper watched from a nearby rooftop.
One man spat on Kessler before the blogger darted away with the help of a police escort.
Clashes broke out in the city Saturday between anti-racism activists and far-right protesters, many of whom carried shields, weapons and Nazi and Confederate battle flags.
One woman was killed when a driver plowed a car into a crowd of counterprotesters.
On Sunday, city officials identified the woman as Heather Heyer, 32. A memorial vigil for her was planned Sunday evening but was postponed because of safety concerns.
Flowers, cards and a photo of Heyer were spread on the street where she was struck along with a sign that read “No place for hate!”
The driver, identified as James Alex Fields Jr., 20, of Ohio,was arrested and charged with second-degree murder, malicious wounding and failure to stop at the scene of an accident that ended in death.
The suspect’s mother, Samantha Bloom, who lives in Toledo, Ohio, said she didn’t know that her son was attending a white supremacist rally.
“I thought it had something to do with Trump,” she told the Toledo Blade, saying she avoided getting “too involved” in her son’s political views.
Derek Weimer, who was Fields’ high school history teacher where he grew up in northern Kentucky, told WCPO-TV in Cincinnati that Fields had been “infatuated with Nazis” and had “radical ideas on race.”
Photos circulating on social media appeared to show Fields posing with members of Vanguard America, a white nationalist group, on the day of the rally. Fields held a blackand-white shield with the organization’s insignia. The group said Fields was not a member and that shields were distributed widely.
More details also emerged about the two state troopers killed when a state police helicopter crashed near the city after monitoring the chaos.
H. Jay Cullen, 48, was a veteran of the force who spent years flying the governor around the state. Berke M.M. Bates, 40 — he would have celebrated his 41st birthday Sunday — was just beginning a career as a helicopter pilot that he had dreamed about for decades.
Dozens of others were injured Saturday, including 19 people hospitalized after the car attack. Ten of those people were listed in “good condition” Sunday at the University of Virginia Medical Center, and nine had been discharged.
“We have treated additional patients related to Saturday’s events, but we do not have an exact number of patients,” the hospital said in a statement.
At the church service Sunday, McAuliffe praised police for preventing more deadly violence the previous day, saying he was told that 80 percent of the white nationalist protesters were armed.
“What I’m asking you to do today is put aside the anger, as I did when I got up today,” McAuliffe said. “Let us show these people that we are bigger than they are, we are stronger than they are.
“You can’t stop some crazy guy who came here from Ohio and used his car as a weapon. He is a terrorist,” McAuliffe said.
Michael Signer, the city’s Democratic mayor, accused Trump in television interviews of taking part in “intentional courting” of white supremacists.
In a statement, Kessler, the rally organizer, deflected blame and pinned responsibility on city officials.
Kessler, who organized the demonstration in response to the city’s efforts to take down a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Emancipation Park, accused police of not doing enough to keep the sides apart.
On ABC News on Sunday, national security adviser H.R. McMaster described the car attack on counterprotesters as “terrorism.”
Los Angeles Times’ Jaweed Kaleem and Melissa Etehad contributed from Los Angeles.